The decision when to provide services by the public sector and when to use the private sector is a fundamental one. The economic literature emphasises that the efficiency of the mechanisms of delivery will depend on the contractual nature of what can be achieved by the parties and the political...

This paper analyses the regulatory attitudes to asset valuation in the 20th century. It focuses in particular on the U.S. experience from Smith v Ames 169 U.S. 466 (1898) to Federal Power Commission v Hope Natural Gas 320 U.S. 591 (1944) and on the experience in the U.K. in last two decades of...

In 2014 the Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England, was given a new secondary objective to facilitate effective competition when it advances its primary objectives related to safety and soundness and policyholder protection. Given the concerns around conflict between competition and...

Privatizations are commonly associated with underpricing and undervaluation. Underpricing has received significant attention in the literature, but there is no equivalent literature that explains undervaluation. This paper provides a theoretical model of why regulated privatized assets are prone...